Online Reporter
THE second fire at Harare’s Magaba Home Industries Complex within a few months, along with fires at other similar complexes, highlights the need to have better regulation of these important centres of small-scale manufacturing businesses.
There also needs to be adequate space and facilities for those whose main object, after all, is earning a living in a productive way, a central policy of the Second Republic.
For practical, as well as ethical reasons, small businesses, especially small industrial concerns, cannot be treated as some sort of nuisance needing temporary accommodation.
For the medium and large industrial concerns the position has always been different. Industrial sites were established and as manufacturing and service industries expanded in size and number, more serviced industrial land was set aside.
No one has ever been told they cannot build a factory, or build one of those complexes of units for smaller and medium-sized industries, because a city or town is full.
In fact, the opposite is the case. Local authorities are usually keen to attract more industry. Town planners expand the area available for this sort of business and make sure the land is properly serviced in time to cope with expanding needs.
They also ensure that fire prevention and other safety rules are enforced, with Zesa checking up on electricity connections before switching on the power.
Attention is paid to make sure environmental rules are obeyed, that no one, for example, pours oil or toxic chemicals down drains or sends vast quantities of smoke and pollutants into the air.
So factory fires are very rare, even when several smaller concerns are sharing a single site or complex. The whole system works.
But as soon as we move to the lowest industrial ranks, the home industries, all regulation and enforcement of basic safety rules seems to vanish. So we get overcrowding, more breaches of rational safe behaviour and then the fires.
Already there are suggestions that the Magaba traders and industries should be moved. That is not the solution.
Magaba is well positioned, close to main city roads, the city centre and the industrial sites occupied by larger industries. That is why people moved there to open their micro and very small businesses, to be close to their customers.
Home industries need to be grouped, to make it far easier for both customers and large suppliers of materials like steel and the nuts and bolts.
A single truck making deliveries can probably handle a respectable number of small industries, keeping transport costs within reason. Customers can move around until they find a specialist for the precise work they want done.
Harare City Council has stated the obvious fact that Magaba is now grossly overcrowded, a result of bad planning and service delivery.
The solution is to either make the complex larger, which is not really possible, or to start developing and opening extra sites for the home industries.
There is also a need to tell those who have outgrown a home industries complex to move into the light industrial sites and start renting or buying factory premises.
Ensuring the planning rules continue to allow smaller factory units on a single industrial stand will keep the supply of such units growing.
Many at Magaba, who cannot be safely squeezed into the present complex, will probably be very reluctant to move. But here there is just need for specialisation and organisation.
Already furniture makers are at Glen View, grouped together to attract their customers and able to attract the required back-up businesses such as repairers of power tools.
Other specialist groups could be given their own complexes, with back-up on the marketing side to ensure customers know where to find them. This would place the micro and other small industries in the same position as giant factories, that new industrial land is opened up on time.
The home industries complexes also need to see the regulators, to have safety rules enforced, the basic fire protection in place and the electricity and water connections done properly, rather than just having a bit of flex and a hosepipe from the next-door business.
Fancy facilities will probably be too expensive for many on the bottom rung of the ladder, but even a basic spartan bay in a complex needs to be safe.
Essentially, the home industries should not be seen as a nuisance, but rather as incubators of new businesses, which will obviously start off small and may remain small for some.
That change in attitude can switch approaches from reluctant toleration to more enthusiastic basic support.
